Villiers vignettes - Sorry the hardest word?

Something to warm the heart of Captain Deltic!

This from Cruella...

Theresa Villiers (Minister of State (Rail and Aviation); Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
I regret to inform the House that there was an inaccuracy in the answer I gave to parliamentary question 58263 on 20 June 2011, Hansard, column 20W, about rolling stock.

The variable track access charges that were contained in the table were incorrect.

The corrected table is reproduced below.

£
	Maintenance	Fuel	Variable Track Access Charge
Bi-mode
When under diesel power	2.74	1.72	0.63
When under electric power	1.78	1.34	((1)) -
Electric	1.78	1.32	0.57
((1) )Indicates brace.

No shit Sherlock.
.
Isn't it time that someone in the Department actually fessed up to dissimulation?

TSC gets to the nub of the problem?

This from the Transport Select Committee...

Oral evidence – work of the department for transport

The Transport Committee will be taking oral evidence from the Secretary of State for Transport and the Permanent Secretary on the work of the Department for Transport.

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Room 8, House of Commons, 3.30 pm
Witnesses:

Department for Transport

• Rt Hon Philip Hammond MP, Secretary of State for Transport

• Lin Homer, Permanent Secretary

Eye wonders if the TSC will find an answer to the question so many in the industry ask:

"Exactly what value does the DfT add?"

DafT shafts Railfreight with longer lorries

This from Rubber Duck...

Ah, breaker one nine this here’s Mike 'Bandit' Penning, Minister for Roads, on a 10-17.

Have all my trucker good buddies got their ears on?

Standby by for a 10-33!

We've got those longer rigs I been promising you. Sure wish we'd had these Widowmakers when I was driving a truck!

Those pesky rail freight folks have been tellin’ me it’s gonna be a knockin’ a two thirds of their business outta the front door.

But I ain't got no ears for railroad folk, I leave that to wooly bear Cruella de Villiers - that's some neat handle.

So you better haul your sorry arse outa my way, I'm going to put the hammer down and set the pedal to me metal!

Mercy snakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy… 1800 trucks in all, all a rollin' across the UK.

What's that you say? My good buddy Pushbike King has changed his handle to Squashed Cyclist?

Oh! Can someone call a meat wagon...

Transport Select Committee for sale?

Oh dear!

Has the Transport Select Committee started offering product placement to generate a couple of extra bob?

The emailed press release below has been overbranded with the logo of motor insurance company Young Marmalade .


No doubt the ROSCOs are planning a similar survey with the TSC to show what great value TOCs consider train leases to be?

German cracks a joke - shocker!

Who says our Teutonic friends don't have a sense of humour?

This from DB's October Press & Trade Newsletter...

British Military train 1945-1990 Tribute on 12 May 2012

21 years ago the curtain came down on one of the most difficult and yet smoothly and consistently delivered trains in the history of European railways.

The British Military Train was born in the wreckage of defeated and broken Germany, and spent its life on the front line of the Cold War. It was operated in a unique and highly politicised partnership between British Army railway operators and the two state railways of the divided Germany. There had been nothing like it before, and it is unthinkable that we will ever see the like of it again. It ran without fuss, with a very British understatement of the political minefield surrounding it.

On 12 May 2012 we acknowledge and celebrate the calm professionalism of railway people, civilian and military, British and German, who did the job, day in day out, without triggering a Third World War.

Amen to that!

Further details about the tribute to the British Military Train can be obtained by emailing: militarytrain2012@gmail.com